


The Truth Will Out

by AndInThoseMoments



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Phil Coulson, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Needs a Hug, Happy Ending, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndInThoseMoments/pseuds/AndInThoseMoments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is captured by an unknown group with links to his past and SHIELD's future.  It's up to Natasha, Phil and Jarvis to get him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set prior to the Avengers, with canon divergence in relation to certain events happening prior to when they happen in the films - but right now, Clint, Phil and Natasha are SHIELD agents. We can assume that this is after Iron Man 2 - so Tony Stark knows Coulson and Natasha, and they know him.
> 
> This is not a happy chapter, but things will get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for canon typical violence and torture

Consciousness came back slowly to Clint, every thought a fight. The room felt like it was spinning and he gagged a little, pain writhing through him. His head hurt, and his stomach, and it was dark. The darkness was a cause for concern, since the last thing that he could remember was sitting on a nest with his bow, and it had been the middle of the day. 

He gagged again, and as he lifted his head he registered that there was a strip of fabric wrapped across his face. He was blindfolded. He squirmed slightly, hissing at the pain. He whimpered, trying to fight down the noise, to stop anyone from realizing that he was awake now. This wasn't how he wanted to wake up; blindfolded, injured and quite possibly drugged.

He needed to work out where he was. The room was still spinning, but he made himself try and think. A deep breath hurt, but it cleared his head a little. The air filling his lungs felt dank, damp against his skin, and terror spiked in his brain, disorientating him for a few moments. He didn't want to be underground. Underground meant that he was trapped.

Wood creaked beside him, and he had a sudden vivid image of being buried alive. He squirmed, attempting to stretch, to see if he was in a coffin. He didn't come into contact with any wood so relief flooded through him. The movement had made him aware of restraints fastened around his wrists and ankles, but even that couldn't stop him from smiling at simply not being buried alive.

Another deep breath, and he tasted something familiar in the air. He retched as a chill ran down his spine. If he'd been given the choice at that moment, he probably would have chosen being buried alive over this. The creaking wood, the sense of movement, the musty air - he knew where this was.

Phil had promised him that he was never going to be back here, but right now he was. He was tied down in a trailer, not for the first time. Trick would leave him there for a long time. He had thought he was free, but he really wasn't. He was still there, still trapped. The noise that he could hear implied that they were driving across a bumpy road. He was disorientated, quite possibly drugged, and blindfolded. Worse, he could hear someone else near by, the steady sound of someone else's breathing.

The trailer rattled on, and something grabbed his arm, pulling it out and twisting his wrist so that his palm was facing upwards.  
"Fuck off." Clint muttered, attempting to pull away. There was no response from the person grabbing his wrist, and then a sudden pain pierced the skin. He hissed, biting his lip in an attempt to stay quiet as something cut deeply in.

After a moment, he worked out what was happening. Whoever this was, they were after his tracker. Fingers pressed into the cut, and there was a sharper pain, and then nothing. There was the sound of metal crunching and then silence fell again, the other inhabitant of the trailer walking away and leaving blood running down Clint's arm.

The trailer jolted, and the world around Clint went blacker, darkness drowning all of his senses.

As Clint slowly woke, he could still feel the blindfold fastened around his eyes. He tested the restraints again, straining his ears to see if there was anyone. No one made a sound, and he lay there in the dark, his breath beginning to speed up. He felt sick, trapped, and when unconsciousness came once more, he didn't fight it.

Clint spluttered as liquid slipped beneath his lips, coughing. He attempted to spit it out, is throat burning - it didn't taste like water. It was bitter, and as he fought for consciousness his first thought was that this was poison, that he was being poisoned. He spat and spluttered, and from above he heard someone laughing. He tried to pull himself away, to escape from the restraints, but he wasn't getting anywhere. He was still trapped, and the liquid he was spitting from his mouth ran up his nose. The man above him patted his shoulder.  
"Aren't you thirsty?"  
"Fuck you." Clint spat, gagging as more water got into his mouth. He tried not to choke, gasping for air.  
"No thanks." The man replied, and walked away, leaving Clint alone. Clint closed his eyes, coughing a few times and taking deep breaths.

It seemed to be hours before the man returned once more. Clint had been awake the entire time, his head spinning, waiting to see whether the liquid was a poison that was going to kill him. He was trapped, tied down in the trailer, and he couldn't move.  
"Hello Clinton." The voice that addressed him made him shake, and he took a few panicked breaths. He tried to do his job. The voice was male, and while the accent was rough, it was no one he knew from his time in the circus. He wasn't even sure that he was in the circus. If someone wanted him frightened, this was a good way to do it. As time passed, he decided he probably hadn't been poisoned - his heart rate and breathing were steady and he felt no sicker than he normally would in a situation like this.

"Talking to you Clinton."  
"Clint." Clint spat out without thinking. He hated his full name - it reminded him too much of parts of his life that he had fought to put behind him.  
"Clinton, I think you must be thirsty." The man paused, then spoke again. "It's been over thirty hours."

Clint couldn't believe that, but he was thirsty. His throat stung. It couldn't be thirty hours. SHIELD would have found him by then. Phil and Natasha would have found him by then.  
"You want a drink?"  
Clint didn't answer, but as a cup pressed against his lips he parted them slightly. Liquid trickled between his lips, and he swallowed, lapping at the edge of the cup thirstily. It was still bitter and foul tasting, but it was wet and his mouth felt so dry he thought nothing of it, gulping as much of it as he could. 

When the cup was moved away, he whined softly, lifting his head in an attempt to chase it.

The voice laughed, but for a few more precious seconds the cup returned, and he drank as much as he could, licking at his lips for the last few drops as it was moved away. For a few moments, there was silence, and Clint began to feel uneasy. He'd been through quite a lot of interrogations in his time, and none of them had involved being given a drink and then having nothing said. The restraints and blindfold were pretty standard - most people knew that his sight was important to him. This, not so much.

"What is SHIELD's plan with the tesseract?" The question was asked calmly and coldly, and Clint jolted slightly in the restraints. He hadn't been expecting the questions to be quite so to the point, nor for the circus to know so much - he supposed this was one more tick in the someone trying to freak him out column. He frowned.

Nothing happened. No threats came, no beatings, no broken fingers. There was nothing. Then the question came again.  
"Clinton, what is SHIELD's plan with the tesseract?"

Clint hissed slightly at the name, but then his mouth opened without thought.  
"I don't know really. I mean Fury is working on Phase Two weaponry, but that's need to know, and I don't need to know." He answered, voice bordering on cocky. He was startled when he realised what he had said. 

"Really? Sleeping with a senior agent? I don't think you're anything like as innocent as you seem. What do you know about the weaponry?"  
"Weaponry is awesome. All high tech and shiny and stuff." Clint answered quickly, trying to remember the training he had been given for truth serums. Distract, deflect and misdirect. That was it. Talk about other things, bend the question, give half truths. He knew that. "Of course, more of a bow and arrow man myself, but you know how it is, need to move with the times if you're a super secret organisation..." He rambled on, licking at his lips, anger twisting in his stomach at the fact he had drank the serum so willingly. He'd known something was wrong, and he'd still swallowed it.

"Nothing clever..." The man told him. "What do you know about the creation of the phase two weaponry being done by SHIELD?"  
Clint bit his lip for a moment, trying to find a way around answering the questions, something that he could say in order to stop himself from spilling some high level stuff. His mind came back empty - that wasn't an easy question to lie to. They'd phrased it that way on purpose.

He fought for an alternative answer, but none was forthcoming. The honest answer pulled at his tongue, trying to fight its way out of his mouth, to attack those he cared about most, to destroy everything. He didn't want to betray them, but he couldn't fight the words that were threatening to spill from his mouth. Natasha would be furious at him for letting them feed him the liquid, for being so thirsty for it.

He thought back to his father, when he had seen him coming back after the pub, when he'd grabbed his shoulder and shouted in his face, spittle flying. He was frightened, the same little scared boy that he had been back then.

He remembered what he had done once, when he'd known that a beating was coming either way. Sticking his tongue out in one last hopeless attempt at rebellion. A deep breath, and that was just what he did again, sticking out his tongue then biting down hard.

He cried out in agony, his tongue cut but not deep enough to separate it, blood filling his mouth. He spat out the iron taste, gagging and coughing in pain, the room seeming to spin in front of him in the darkness. He spat again.

"What do you know about the creation of the phase two weaponry being done by SHIELD?"  
The words tumbled from his mouth now, his injured tongue distorting them. There was a snort from his interrogator, and the sound of him walking away, the door of the trailer closing.

For one blissful moment, Clint thought that he was free for a little while. Then laughter began, from over in the corner, a noise he couldn't forget, that was still etched into his subconscious and his nightmares after all of these years. Trickshot was here.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson and Natasha look for Clint

Natasha flicked open her phone, looking over her shoulder as she left the building that had been Clint's last known location.  
"No sign of him." She told Coulson immediately, not wanting to give him a chance to get his hopes up. "It looks like his team didn't look that hard for him either. No signs of a struggle, but there was a button on the scene that isn't his."

"Alright. Come back in." Coulson said softly, fighting to keep the disappointment from his voice. "We will find him, but we need to look over what we have first."  
"Understood. I have somewhere I need to go, then I will be back."  
"Alright." Coulson surrendered easily - this was hard for Natasha, and if she needed some time to clear her head, he wasn't about to deny her that.

Coulson stared down at the paperwork in front of him - the prep materials for the mission Clint had been on before he had gone missing. The handler had been most exact about Clint's positioning - there were three potential rooftop nests that could have been chosen, but the handler had insisted that he went on the one that meant no one else could see him. At the time the reasoning had been that it gave the best coverage, but right now Coulson was seeing conspiracies everywhere. Someone had taken Clint, and he wasn't willing to rest until he got him back.

Scanning the security camera footage from nearby provided nothing of any worth - Clint hadn't been seen on there since he had walked past on his way to the nest, and there had been nothing suspicious, no one who stood out. 

Coulson rubbed his forehead, sighing slightly to himself and trying to ignore the ache that stung behind his eyes. It had been eight hours since Barton had been reported missing, but no one had had comms contact for him for several hours prior to the alert being issued. He simply hadn't been there when the mission objectives had been completed. His nest had been empty, bow resting on the ground beside where he had been. Clint would never have willingly left his bow, so it being there made him feel sick.

Coulson had been up most of the night working on his own paperwork after his own mission, and regretted it now. He had barely slept in the last sixty hours. He wanted to be at his sharpest and most focused when it came to finding Clint, but there was nothing he could put together to explain his sudden disappearance.

"I found this beside the railway." Natasha informed him. It was only years of training that stopped him from jumping at her sudden appearance behind him, but he smiled tightly and reached for her hand.  
"Thank you." He took the tracker that she was offering, noticing the red that it was coated in almost dispassionately. They could run a DNA test on the dried blood, as well as checking the serial number. But Coulson was sure it was Clint's.

It was only once he had carefully placed the tracker down that he actually looked at Natasha, and what he saw startled him. She was frightened, and angry, and almost panicked, her body vibrating almost with repressed energy. He didn't think he had ever seen her so worked up before.  
"Natasha?"  
"I think that SHIELD... that someone at SHIELD must have helped. That rooftop was secure sir. Once he was there and had the alarms set up correctly, it should have been impenetrable."

Coulson nodded, not bothering to waste the breath to argue that it was maybe an accident. Natasha had a good eye for these things, and regardless the situation had seemed suspicious to him as well.  
"Okay." He spoke slowly, his voice calm and non-confrontational, not giving her someone to lash out at.  
"This is a very far way from okay Coulson." Natasha answered. "Someone kidnapped your boyfriend. You told me you were the good guys, but good guys don’t do that to each other.” Natasha answered, her gaze furious. Natasha normally was cold about her work, but right now she was missing Clint and struggling with the possibility of being betrayed. Coulson couldn’t blame her for her pain.

Coulson nodded, taking a deep breath.  
"I just need to think. Right now I'm exhausted, and getting emotional won't help. When he's home, then I can have emotions, but right now that isn't what he needs." He explained, attempting to stifle a yawn. She looked at him, her eyes travelling up and down his body, before finally he gave in.  
"Sorry. I hadn't slept much last night and it was a busy day even before I found out."

"Get some rest sir. I'll look after these reports and the cameras, see if anything can be found." Phil opened his mouth to protest, then decided not to risk arguing with her. Not when she was in this mood. If Natasha was telling him to sleep, it was because it was a biological necessity, not because of anything else. He nodded once.  
"Wake me if you find anything."

"Of course." Natasha answered, turning and walking away, leaving Coulson in his office.

Coulson couldn't face being in the empty apartment where Clint should have been, laying in their bed without the warmth of his lover beside him. He could just about face sleeping on the couch, even if even that reminded him of Clint. He lay down on the couch in his office, pulling out the blanket that Clint kept stashed underneath it, pulling it out and wrapping it over himself. It smelt vaguely of Clint, and he smiled a little.

No call from Natasha came, but Coulson was woken by the sound of his cell ringing. He picked up his phone, saw that it was Fury calling, and reluctantly answered.  
"Hello?"  
"Hey Cheese. I hear that Agent Barton is missing. We are looking, but I can't stop all of our work to leap to find him, you know that right?"  
"I know." Phil answered, wondering if that was all Fury had called him up to say.

"SHIELD only has limited resources." Nick said, and there was a momentary pause before he continued. "I need you to drop this for now Cheese, I need someone liaising with Stark, and you are the best person for it."

Phil opened his mouth to object, before he realised that even whilst being his boss, Nick was not going to be that cruel, not about something this vital. A split second later, he worked out what was being said.  
SHIELDs' resources were limited, especially if Clint had been set up by his temporary handler. Stark's resources were not.

"Thank you sir." He said softly. "Can Agent Romanoff be removed from active duty until Agent Barton has been located? I believe that she needs to be focusing on his return."  
"Alright, if you can get Stark on side you can have her. Best of luck Cheese, with everything. I'll send you mission details now." The phone line went dead, and a few moments later the message arrived.

It was only a few hours later that he was letting himself in to Stark's mansion, pausing to greet the familiar voice of Stark's AI.  
"Hello Agent Coulson. Sir has given me strict instructions to inform you that you should not be permitted entrance, and that he forbids you from coming inside."  
"Thank you Jarvis. How are you?"  
"I am most well thank you Agent. It is most wonderful to see you again, Miss Potts will be pleased." The AI sounded almost chirpy about it all, and when Coulson made his way to the workshop, Jarvis made no move tot stop him.

Stark was engrossed in the work on the table in front of him, his gaze focused as he attempted to carefully solder a join. He didn't look up at Coulson.  
"I thought I wasn't good enough for your super secret boy band?" He complained, the disdain clear in his voice. "I mean, if you want me to be in it, I'll think about it, but..."  
"Stark, you're a consultant and we need you to consult." Coulson spoke up. He didn’t have time to massage Stark’s ego, thinking of the tracker Natasha had found, of his lover missing somewhere, frightened and alone.

"What do you need me to consult on?"  
"We have managed to capture some material from AIM. We are not entirely sure what it does, but if possible, if you could look over it..."  
"Alright." Tony agreed, his words accompanied by a dramatic sigh. "If it means that much to you, I'll look over the photos. Once I've done this. Go and sit in the lounge, I'll be up when I'm ready."

Coulson nodded - Tony had agreed, and if he wanted a few minutes first to finish a personal project, he wouldn't be the one to stop him. He headed to the lounge, sitting on one of the leather sofas, and pausing.  
"Jarvis, is it just the two of us here?"  
"Indeed Agent Coulson. Is there something that you require assistance with? I can inform you where the coffee maker is if that would help."

Coulson sighed.  
"A bit more of an ask than a coffee maker I'm afraid Jarvis. Agent Barton, codename Hawkeye, went missing on his last mission. We have reason to believe he was taken, and this belief was confirmed by finding his tracker cut out by some train tracks. We need to find him as fast as possible, but SHIELD does not have the resources to divert on a single agent's rescue."  
"I will find him for you sir." Jarvis answered quickly. "I am already scanning the SHIELD files for more information, and CCTV of the area at the time of his disappearance.  
"You do realise you aren't actually meant to be in SHIELD files?" Phil asked, more to himself than the AI.

"I do sir. However, I do not find that a necessary reason to refrain from looking there, particularly when I have reason to believe that information I need is contained within them."  
"Thank you." Coulson murmured, trying to work out what he could get to say thank you to Jarvis for his help - it wasn't like a fruit basket would be of much use to an individual who wasn't corporeal. He was certain that if Clint was here, he would have had a good idea. Clint always had a unique way of looking at the world - a way not without his problems, but still effective in its own way. Certainly suitable for situations like this.

"Agent Coulson?" Jarvis spoke, startling him from his reverie. "I believe that I have found something that might be of interest."  
The coffee table before him transformed into a digital screen, showing the recorded view of a track. Along it, rolled a convoy of trailers.  
"These would have been in the area at the time that he went missing, and I believe they are the most likely cause of his disappearance." Jarvis zoomed in for a moment, and Coulson saw a tiny spark fly from one of the windows. "That appears to have been them removing Agent Barton's tracker."

"Where are they now?" Coulson asked, excitement welling up inside of him. That faded slightly a moment later, as the convoy reached a bank of trucks and a swarm of figures emerged, before the trucks headed off in different directions.  
"I am still attempting to calculate that Agent Coulson. There have been several other similar stops for multiple vehicles.. Unfortunately it appears that the men who have Agent Barton do not want him to be found."


End file.
